The automotive industry’s focus on digital experience has gone up a gear in recent years. Along with competing over the best-engineered products, manufacturers are now competing to offer customers the best-engineered digital automotive experience possible.
We sat down with Michael Roosen, former Managing Director of Toyota & Lexus Belgium (Toyota), to talk about the importance of customer experience (CX) in the automotive industry and Toyota in particular. Watch Michael's interview to learn all about Toyota’s customer-centric approach to digital, and the crucial role Contentsquare plays in Toyota Belgium’s success.
Why is the digital automotive experience so important?
Today, the car dealership is rarely a customer’s first port of call when purchasing a vehicle. Many customers now prefer to buy cars online; the market for online car buying is projected to reach 722 billion USD by 2030.
And even if they aren’t willing to purchase a car without sitting in it first, they’re still likely to check out the website before paying a visit to the dealership.
“In automotive today, the digital experience is the first point of contact,” Michael says. “They could be on their mobile or their laptop, but the first point of interaction is almost always a digital platform.”
And it isn’t just first-time buyers that automotive companies are serving digitally. It’s just (if not more) important to cater to existing customers through digital channels.
“Automotive is all about loyalty,” says Michael. “Customers will come back after their first purchase for services, maintenance, and information about their car and any new services that are available.”
As the most convenient touchpoint for many customers, digital channels are critical for nurturing loyalty and are an intrinsic component of today’s automotive customer lifecycle.
This decade has seen the business model for automotive change (thanks in part to the emergence of electric vehicles, or EVs) from securing one-off purchases to driving additional revenue through recurring services and products.
“A physical contact with the customer is still important,” says Michael. “But in-between those real-world interactions we have a digital platform to stay in touch, keep up a connection, and nurture loyalty—all to the benefit of the customer.”
That’s why Michael considers digital customer experience “fundamental” to Toyota Belgium’s objectives, and why he believes that the company has to be “the best retailer online” to succeed as a business.
Here are 3 insights into optimizing the digital automotive experience that Michael shared.
1. Data analytics is key to improving the automotive experience
Toyota Belgium’s guiding principle is customer centricity. The company aims for every interaction a customer has with the brand, whether physical or digital, to be the best, most efficient and satisfying interaction possible.
To execute on this principle of putting the customer first, Toyota Belgium must first understand the customer. That’s where analytics tools like Contentsquare's experience intelligence platform come in.
“We made all our decisions based on data,” says Michael. "We used various tools, including Contentsquare, to study the customer journey and understand our customers’ behavior so we could offer them the best possible experience going forward."
Toyota Belgium’s digital team A/B test every campaign they run so that they can assess the impact of their decisions on customer behavior and optimize accordingly.
“When a customer was confused by a call to action or campaign, we noticed it because the data told us,” says Michael. “We’re constantly looking at whether things work or not, and then taking actions to improve, improve, improve.”
2. A stand-out automotive experience relies on tech and talent
In prioritizing innovation, Toyota Belgium is far from an outlier in an industry that’s always been on the leading edge of innovation—a tendency Michael puts down to vehicles being “the center of the life of our customers.”
However, not all automotive companies have moved as fast as others, and the more complacent companies have wound up being left behind their forward-thinking and moving competitors.
Determined that Toyota Belgium doesn’t take its foot off the gas and fall behind, Michael invested heavily in both technology and (an often overlooked element of digital transformation) talent.
“You can have the best website, the best tools and platforms, but if you don’t have the best talent to run these then those tools will be sub-optimal and under-utilized,” says Michael.
“That’s why I’m proud to have created a digital team that’s one of the best—if not the best—in Belgium’s automotive industry.”
So remember: Talent might not quite trump technology when it comes to customer experience (CX), but it’s absolutely key to unlocking the huge potential of your technology and digital channels.
3. Digital and physical should dovetail for a great experience
As far as Michael is concerned, Toyota Belgium’s digital and business objectives are “one and the same”. After all, if the company fails to perform on digital, its business performance will necessarily be compromised.
The digital experience is therefore of paramount importance for Toyota Belgium. But this doesn’t mean that the physical retail experience can be treated as an afterthought.
It’s about consistency: customers needed to have the best experience on our digital platforms and have that same level of experience when they came to our dealership for a test drive.
Occasionally, the digital and physical customer experience will divert from each other—but will end up dove-tailing in a complementary manner.
“When a customer came to us with a very specific issue that couldn't be solved through digital channels alone, we brought a solution to life outside the digital experience” explains Michael. “However, we’ll learned from this and integrated the solution we worked out into our digital automotive experience for future customers.”
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